Sunday, April 18, 2010

Manshiyat Naser or Garbage City

I've been having a little bit of tourist's remorse about going to Manshiyat Naser or Garbage City as it's also known. I really had no purpose being there besides witnessing the unimaginable amounts of garbage. Despite having lived overseas most of my childhood, I have never seen such poverty (quite the opposite in fact). So the truth is, I'm a slum tourist. I came. I saw. I clicked. And then I returned back to my comfortable home. I'm sorry. Please don't judge me too harshly. I just really wanted to see some garbage.

Anyways, you ought to know more about this fascinating neighborhood. The city of Cairo does not have a formal garbage collection service. The Zabbaleen are the folks who collect, sort and recycle the garbage. They are mostly Coptic Christians (you'll notice some crosses in the photos below) and this is the only occupation that is available to them. Families will typically specialize in a particular type of garbage, sorting it into sellable and unsellable. They use the organic waste to feed and raise pigs. The entire economy of this neighborhood revolves around trash.

Walking around these streets with my camera and my dad's bodyguard didn't seem very appropriate, so all of these photos are shot from within the car. And to top it off, the windows don't roll down so they're pretty crappy. I'm trying to look on the bright side, at least I didn't have to experience the stench of garbage from a city that contains 18 million people.

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Who are we?

Clargaret consists of the artists formerly known as Clark and Margaret or Scrivener and Little Red. We've been married for 8 years and currently live in Tucson where the weather is warm, the cacti are tall and the howling coyotes sound a little too much like our boys waking up in the middle of the night. Our blog is too cool to share with our kids, and until they start sleeping through the night, we refuse to take them to Disneyland.